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travelers, but the station’s real purpose was to serve hounds—provide them a place to rest, regroup and exchange information.
    Even, like now, a place to pass the new moon.
    She tugged at a lock of Merrick’s hair. “Will you put me down and let me walk the rest of the way?”
    He snarled in response and tightened his grip on her, as if she’d tried to get away. “No. You hurt your ankle.”
    Oh, he was going to drive her crazy , and she knew she was done for when the thought was tempered by as much affection as exasperation. “I barely lost my footing. If I were a man, you’d tell me to buck up and stop my infernal whining.”
    His grumbled reply was too low to be understood, but he did loosen his grip. “Maybe I’ll let you walk once I get a chance to look at it.”
    Which would be after they made it down into the low valley—and to the safety of the outpost. She let the matter drop, turning her attention to the building itself. “This area was lost to vampire infestation decades ago, but the place looks intact. Not even a window broken.”
    “Probably warded.” He picked a careful path down the side of the hill, showing no strain from carrying her as well as all of their supplies. If anything, his energy seemed barely contained, as if it grew with each passing hour. “Something the scientists came up with in the early days.”
    Half of what he’d told her of the scientists’ work sounded more like experimentation than anything. “To keep people in or out? Sometimes when you talk about the Guild, I’m not entirely sure.”
    He huffed out a laugh. “It started as a way to pass messages. They made tubes that would destroy the message if someone didn’t unlock them, and the locks were chemical. Took a hound’s blood to release. Over the years, though, they managed to build them up until they could protect entire buildings. More magic than science, I think.”
    “Alchemy.” It was as good a word as any for the strange combination of disciplines that had created the man carrying her.
    “Something along those lines,” he agreed. “I can get us past the ward, then engage them again. They’ll hold us safe enough through the new moon.”
    The new moon. Her concern over whether the accident of Fate that had led him to choose her would survive the hunger of the darkened sky had disappeared, banished by the events of the previous night. “Are you worried?”
    “A little.” It seemed like a grudging admission. “Never been through a new moon like this before.”
    “With a mate, you mean.”
    “With a mate.”
    She held her tongue while he navigated the last of the slippery, rocky slope. “I don’t imagine it’s something the other hounds discuss.”
    “Sometimes.” He paused at the base of the trail, his gaze skipping across the clearing as if studying it for signs of life. “Not in much detail though, no. A hound with a mate gets violently possessive. Best not to show too much interest in her.”
    She had no idea what to expect, but she hadn’t thought he might be equally bewildered. “Well, how different could it be?”
    “I don’t—” He froze, nostrils flaring before his head whipped to the side. He tightened his arms around her, but it was only a squirrel scrambling up a nearby tree.
    “ Merrick. ” He’d bypassed tense and flown straight into jumpy, and they’d never get anywhere this way. She brushed a kiss to his cheek and said firmly, “Put me down and do what you have to do to open the door. We can relax inside.”
    He dragged in a deep, ragged breath. Then another. When he finally eased his grip, he lowered her so slowly she thought he might be preparing to snatch her back off the ground at the first hint of danger—or pain.
    She gingerly applied weight to her injured leg, testing her ankle. “It’s nothing unbearable, but the sooner we get inside the better.”
    Merrick let her walk, but he kept one arm around her body, ready to take her weight, and only relented when